One conventional pattern which, having commenced by being a symbol, has been repeated and varied till it has allowed the original essential meaning to escape, is the “palm-leaf” or “cone” pattern on French or Paisley shawls, which, having been a sacred emblem—the tree of life—in Persia, became in Europe, when the religious myth was lost, only a shawl pattern—merely a leaf, with plant painted within its outlines. (Plate [23], Nos. 10, 11.)
Decorative designs become conventional in spite of the intention of the designer. He is overruled by the spaces to be covered and the materials to be employed. His design must produce a flat pattern; he must repeat it again and again; he must give it a strong outline; he must distribute it regularly at certain intervals. Repetition at once conventionalizes the most naturalistic drawing, and the most sacred and mysterious emblem. Alternation is equally a source of conventionalism. There is no motive that cannot be conventionalized into a pattern by repetition. A Gothic crown and a true lily, repeated, will make an ecclesiastical conventional pattern. Then come all the Arabian and Moresque forms (which are mostly geometric), and also the Gothic (which are partly geometric and partly naturalistic, especially those in German and debased Spanish and Portuguese Gothic design).
Pl. 19.
1. Key Pattern. 2. Broken-up Key. 3. Beads. 4. Key and sign of Land. 5. Wave and Babylonian Daisy. 6. Key and Fundata. 7. Wave and Bead. 8. Wave and Daisy. 9. Key and Sun Cross. These Key Patterns from Ceiling of a Tomb at Saccarah, in Egypt. (Wilkinson’s “Ancient Egyptians.”)
Then we must accept as conventional all those which may be called kaleidoscope patterns, which are broken fragments of old motives, repeated or “radiated” so as to become partly geometrical, wholly conventional. (See Pl. [17], No. 2.)
Conventional patterns may be reduced into three kinds.
First, the naturalistic, which have by repetition been adapted for decorative art.
Secondly, the symbolical—Pagan or Christian, religious or historical, including the Heraldic.